A Near-Fall

Apolo Anton Ohno was on his way to jail when it occurred to him that life might be more pleasant as an Olympic athlete. So he reexamined his priorities and set out to become one.

OK, so he was only 15 at the time, was already a budding star in his sport, short-track speedskating, and had never been arrested. But he had just suffered a major disappointment and, by his own admission, “had a lot of friends that were gangbangers in [hometown] Seattle.”

Ohno’s parents were divorced before he was a year old and his hair stylist father, Yuki Ohno, spent long days at his shop.

“I was a latch-key kid from when I was 7 years old,” Apolo recalled.

By the time he hit his teens, he had developed a lifestyle that was pulling him toward real trouble.

“Mostly I was just hanging out with the wrong crowd,” he said. “Always, when I was younger, I hung out with older people. I was taken to a lot of house parties, clubs, that kind of thing.... There was times when I would just go to a friend’s house and wouldn’t come home until, like, three days later.

“It was that kind of lifestyle that I think would have led to something a lot more severe. There were definitely paths in my life that, if I took them, I wouldn’t be here [as an Olympian] today.”

So how did it come about that, in a few days, the young man who says his first name, of Greek derivation, means “to lead away from,” as in temptation, stands to become one of the brightest lights of the Salt Lake City Olympics?

It goes back to a decision he made, sitting on a rock in the pouring-down rain, massaging a blister on his foot, in a remote seaside area about two hours north of Seattle. Ohno, star of the U.S. junior short-track team, had just missed qualifying for the ’98 Games in Nagano and was at loose ends.

“After I missed the team, I spent about a week in a cabin by myself,” he said. “There was no TV, no telephone. There’s nothing--just ocean, sand and trees. I spent a week of solitude there, just thinking about that whole year, and what I could have done, and if I really wanted to keep pursuing this.

“I always liked short track, but I really didn’t realize how much I loved the sport until I was out in the cabin. Then it kind of came to me.

“It was raining the whole time I was there--every single day--but I wanted to keep working out because I wanted to make the world team. There was one day, it was my third workout of the day, and I was running and it was just pouring. I had a hole in my shoe and I was getting a huge blister.

“I was so tired, just really tired of training. I stopped and sat on a rock at the side of the road. I just sat there for a while and I think I just realized that if I was really designed for speedskating, I’m going to keep running.

“I got up and kept running.”

Apparently, he was very well-designed for speedskating, for he stands today--all 5 feet 8 and 165 pounds of him--as short track’s ranking male star. At 18, he won the overall championship in last season’s World Cup competition and ranked first in each of the three individual events.

There are those predicting he will not only win those three events--the 500-, 1,000- and 1,500-meter races in the Games--but will set records doing so.

Accidents happen quickly and often, though, in short track and, as someone once pointed out, ice is a slippery substance.

“If I make a mistake, I slip a tenth of a second and I’ve lost the race,” Ohno said.

In fact, he had to survive a bit of a slip to stay in the Games. Tommy O’Hare, a teammate and a ’98 Olympian, charged after Olympic qualifying that Ohno and Rusty Smith had conspired to fix the final race at the trials so that their friend, Shani Davis, would make the team, at O’Hare’s expense.

Ohno and Smith both denied wrongdoing but could have been dismissed from the team had the charge stuck. During an arbitration hearing in late January, however, it was determined that there was insufficient evidence to support O’Hare’s charge and he withdrew it.